Transport refrigeration units, such as transport refrigeration units for conditioning the air of a trailer of a tractor-trailer combination, require a shipping crate for shipping each unit to a dealer or user. It is common to construct such shipping crates of wood. Wood, however, in addition to being expensive and wasteful of forest resources, requires additional costly disposal steps after uncrating the transport refrigeration unit. Returnable metal crates have also been used. Metal crates, however, require tracking and they incur the expenses involved in shipping the crates back to the manufacturer for re-use.
It would be desirable, and it is an object of the present invention, to eliminate or minimize the use of wood in the shipping crates of transport refrigeration units, and to make it unnecessary to return at least most of the components of a metal shipping crate. It would also be desirable, and it is another object of the present invention, to construct a shipping crate of components which may be converted by the user of the transport refrigeration unit to perform a function related to the assembly of the transport refrigeration unit on a trailer whose space is to be conditioned by the transport refrigeration unit.